SCDAT - Swiss Guidelines Comittee for Drugs of Abuse Testing

About the SCDAT Guidelines


The Swiss Guidelines for Drugs of Abuse Testing (SCDAT guidelines) are recommendations for the clinical laboratories and non-legal institutions testing urine and blood samples for drugs of abuse. They are not legally binding in nature. Harmonization in drug analyses is the objective.
The SCDAT guidelines encompass the different stages of drug analyses, from the individual to be tested, through the client, to the result. The guidelines specifically deal with sampling, shipping, preanalytical, analytical, and postanalytical aspects, quality assurance, interpretation and documentation of the results of the analyses, as well as the costs.

SCDAT Guidelines were originally published by the work group on Drugs of Abuse Testing (AGSA). The SCDAT, successor to AGSA, was a work group composed of members of the following institutions: Swiss Association of Pharmacists (pharmaSuisse), Swiss Society of Clinical Chemistry (SSCC), Swiss Society of Legal Medicine (SGRM), Swiss Association of the Diagnostic Equipment and Product Industry (SVDI) and University of Berne.

Since 2014, the responsibility of the SCDAT Guidelines has been transferred to the SSCC. The current version of the guidelines is the result of a revision commissioned to the working group “Medicaments” of the SSCC.

See the Guidelines page to have access to the documentation.

News

28 February 2023

The updated version of the SCDAT guidelines is now available in English, German and French here.